


Par for the Course

by ActuallyAndroid



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/M, Jealousy, Pining, Rejection, So much angst, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, breaking up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-01-10 21:51:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12308547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ActuallyAndroid/pseuds/ActuallyAndroid
Summary: The story opens with a broken femur but everything starts long before then.





	1. Really, Wouldn't It Be Easier to Have a Red String or Something?

 

* * *

 

It’s sudden.

The searing agony comes centralised to your femur, a sharp flame that expands outward into the muscles of your thigh with a burning that makes you keel over and gasp in pain.

“What’s going on?” Your boyfriend, Akira Kurusu, keeps you steady, worries over you as your chopped gasps turn into sobs and your hands constrict tightly around your thigh as though you can force the pain way.

It hurts.

The worst of it stretches over a span of half an hour. In the ambulance on your way to the hospital, the paramedics ask you questions.

“Where does it hurt?” Is the first, and you can’t force the strings in your throat loose enough to answer, because your head is full of  _pain_ ,  _pain_ ,  _pain_. The best you can do is point messily at your thigh, and it makes Akira’s face scrunch up in worry.

“What were you doing when it started?”

There’s something inside Akira that prompts him to speak up in your place. He thinks it’s the way the muscles of your stomach clench whenever you try to give yourself a voice, because every time you convulse his heart leaps to his throat.

His hands are shaking.

“We were walking across a field, and she fell to the floor and started holding onto her leg.” He’s pushing up the rims of his glasses with one hand and holding yours in the other. You squeeze it every time the pain ebbs through you, and he squeezes back.

“Are you her soulmate?” is the third question, and Akira shakes his head, looks a little defensive, and holds your hand tighter.

“No,” he says, “she’s never had a mark.”

 

* * *

 

“You don’t have a soulmate?” you ask, about two months into your friendship.

Honestly, you’re surprised. On top of the fact Akira has never been unpopular (in fact, he's got a bit of a track record for rejecting his fair share of marked girls), he doesn’t have any major personality deficiencies, and he’s certainly not unattractive (not by a long-shot). When you first meet him, the friend who introduces you to each other is quick to insist that Akira has always been a flirt, and sure, you laugh at it then, but it’s hard to believe two months in, when you’ve never even seen him talking to girls about matters unrelated to schoolwork. (Well, not including yourself. The two of you have had plenty of midnight conversations.)

But even all those things notwithstanding, you're most surprised that he hasn't told you already. His secrecy is odd and unfamiliar, because you’ve always been vocal about being blank; it’s never really mattered to you.

Apparently, he doesn’t share your sentiment, because he looks kind of broken-hearted when he shakes his head. “No, I’ve never had one," he says, and looks over your arms with an insecurity that makes you anxious.

“That’s such a shame,” you say. "Any girl would be lucky to have you.”

Instead of bouncing the compliment back at you (like he’s been confident in doing for the past few months) he hesitates. There’s something in the way he avoids your eyes, and it’s too calculated to be shyness, but it’s too insecure to be deliberate, either.

“How about you?” he asks.

Suddenly, it makes sense.

 

* * *

 

“If it’s a broken femur, she might not make a full recovery,” you hear one paramedic mumble, as he pushes you into the x-ray room on a hospital bed. You try to speak, but it doesn’t even make it past the tension in your diaphragm, so they feed you with painkillers and tell you to relax.

‘Broken femur?' What did you do to break a femur? The femur is the strongest bone in the body, it doesn’t just  _break_.

“Take it easy,” Akira says. His fingers shake when they brush against yours, and the pain eases (but only by a little.)

He stays with you when the scan is finished, rubs your hair away from your sweaty forehead and wipes you with a tissue he finds in a drawer. They’ve given you sedatives, and although you’d like to fight them off to be there for the scan results, you find you’ve ran out of strength. Eventually, you drift off, consciousness fading to a numb black, and the last thing you remember is a nurse walking in with a smile on her face that drops as soon as she sees Akira.

“Are you her boyfriend?” she asks, while you’re asleep. There's an odd semblance of pity in her tone that churns Akira's stomach in premonition.

He nods, fiddling nervously with the rims of his glasses.

“Oh. Well, the good news is," the nurse begins, forced smile cutting wry lines into her face, "she's fine. There’s at all nothing wrong with her.”

One, two, three breaths in silence. The nurse definitely wants to say something else, but it looks like she's struggling to get the words out.

"What's the bad news?"

 

* * *

 

He looks conflicted when you wake up, three and a half hours later. Always been a romantic at heart, really, which is why you’re not surprised to see he’s been watching over you. His clean, blank hands feel sweaty in yours. He’s got blank wrists, arms, cheeks, shoulders, legs, thighs, and ears. The both of you have never seen the smooth calligraphy that outlines the name of another on your bodies, but it’s not a bad thing; it’s what brought you two together in the first place, jammed together like two jigsaw pieces that wouldn't fit with the greater picture.

As soon as he sees your eyes open, he takes one hand out of yours and uses it to run through your hair, trailing it across your cheeks, stopping just short of your lips.

“You’re awake,” he says. It’s equally worried and relieved, like his voice has been crumpled and put under a press.

“What happened?” you ask. Waking up after morphine feels like walking in a cloud, as expected. Even the muscles in your arms feel dreary and numb, like you’ve spend the day sleeping on them.

“Nothing.” He looks straight at you, tone laced with an odd conviction that’s almost completely devoid of any emotion. “You’ll be fine. Everything’s alright.”

You’re not sure why the way he says it makes it sound like it’s not alright.

“Akira?” you prompt, letting your finger trail up the underside of his arm.

He swallows a lump in his throat.

 

* * *

 

A year ago, the two of you sit on a balcony that juts out from his parent’s room underneath the cover of a dark sky.

“I can’t believe we’re not soulmates,” he says. “The universe must have forgotten to give us our names.” Blank hands intertwine, and even though he looks regretful as he looks over at his own skin, you think he’s happy.

You think you are, too.

With your ear pressed against his chest, you can feel his pulse quicken as he steals glances at you, pulls you further into his chest and kisses the top of your head. The chaste qualities of the kisses slowly give way to something a little more intense: to longer, more drawn-out intervals of the feeling of his lips on your skin (to your temples, jawline, and neck) or to his hands feeling more, and more, and more of you.

“Let me leave marks,” he mumbles, as he nips at your collar.

‘I want myself on you,’ he doesn’t say. ‘ _I want evidence._ ’

 

* * *

 

When Akira calls the nurse over and she recounts what she told him, he seems stable on the outset. To anyone who doesn't know better, there’s nothing that indicates he's in a particularly bad mood, or even that he's paying much mind to the predicament he's in, really, but the consistency of the blankness on his face raises red flags – like he’s just trying his best not to let emotions get the better of him.

“You’ve got a soulmate,” the nurse says, “just in a different way.” And what does that even mean? In a different way? A soulmate is a name. You haven’t got a name.

“There’s one way to have a soulmate,” you protest, and pull Akira’s hand into your chest.

“Apparently not," he says, and laughs bitterly.

 

* * *

 

"It’s like the universe’s own form of error correction," is what the nurse says. "Names are the first order of linking soulmates together, but if they fail through one way or another (your mother doesn’t get enough iron before birth to leave the mark, a mutation wipes your skin clean, the identity of the soulmate depends on another individual's decision, and so on and so on), there’s other methods of ensuring two soulmates meet. Experiencing pain through another is particularly common in countries where the vast majority are illiterate, for instance."

“So, there’s nothing wrong?”

She shakes her head, smiling. “I imagine your soulmate is in a bit of a pickle, but they should be fine. If the pain has passed, they’re probably on morphine in a hospital.”

You don’t know what to say.

It’s a lot to happen all in one day: unspeakable pain shooting through you out of nowhere, getting shipped off to a hospital in an ambulance, passing out through morphine, and waking up to the news that your whole life from now on will be changed. There’s not much in terms of emotion bar confusion and emptiness, like you know you should be feeling something but aren’t quite sure what that something is.

The nurse seems to realise you need some time to straighten things out with your boyfriend, so she makes some half-hearted excuse and leaves you with Akira, unraveling the curtains around your bed and hiding you from the other patients.

“What now?” You ask him. He must be taking things hard even if he doesn’t look it, because you have your suspicions that he's never really let the whole soulmate thing go. Whenever it comes down to articulating what he feels for you, it's always: ‘I feel drawn to you,’ ‘we’re made for each other,’ ‘the universe has made a mistake.’ Multiple times, he’s said that it just feels  _right_ , in the same way people say their soulmates just feel right, like the world is coming together and this is all they need to be happy.

It takes a while for him to say anything. He has a bad habit of thinking things through without telling anyone, and you can tell right now he’s knee-deep in deliberation.

“What do you want to do?” he asks eventually, with a voice forcefully smoothed into monotone.

“I want to stay together. I don’t care about soulmates.” You try to make your voice sound resolute, like there’s no room for argument – even if you’re not entirely convinced that's the case. Sure, you’ve never cared about soulmates, but are you convinced you’ll be able to say the same thing if you meet them ten years down the line? You want to say yes. Soulmates are overrated, anyway, and they don’t make you prone to not having arguments or storming out of the house and leaving. The only thing they offer is consistency and satisfaction, and you’ve got plenty of that with Akira.

“I know you don’t.” It doesn’t sound particularly happy or convinced. Quite the opposite, it’s pained, troubled, and it makes you feel like Akira’s about to do something you don’t like. When he speaks next, his voice comes out in tatters. It's clear he's trying not to cry.

“I want you to be happy,” he says.

 

* * *

 

Akira’s mother and father are seventeen and eighteen when they marry, respectively. A paragon of the textbook soulmates, they sweep through their romance with a whirlwind love that never dies down down - every aspect of their personalities meshing and intertwining, leaving no space for arguments bigger than little, everday spats, and no holes in his childhood that need to be filled. But there's an inevitability that comes with being exposed to something so perfect for so much of your life. An assuredness that you'll always pine after it until you get it, regardless of circumstance, probability, and the blankess of your skin. After everyone else gets their names and Akira still doesn't have his, he pretends it doesn't apply to him. He lives life without the need for big words like soulmates or destiny (although he's not quite cynical enough to give up on 'love' in entirety) and he's happy.

When Akira gets to the age where romantic attraction starts to become less of a story and more of a reality, he's fine settling for temporary hook-ups. They're rarely bad experiences, if not a little awkward, and they never prove insufficient. For three long years before Akira meets you, they fulfill every single thing he could ever ask for as a teenage boy, and he ensures they never last long enough that anyone gets attached. But the first time he sees you is something else entirely; it's everything his parents describe: his eyes flitting over to you unconsciously, like you're pulling strings on his iris, actual, genuine, electricity when his hands barely skim over yours, ocean storm banging against his stomach when you confess, a better side of himself inspired by your mere presence, and a raging fire inside of him whenever the two of you are alone. It's like all the elements are coming together to overwhelm him.

He can't believe it, but you’re all of that. You’re everything, and he loves you. You’re his soulmate.

“I’m staying with you,” you say.

He looks you in the eye. “No, you’re not.”

 

* * *

 

You're aware he’s doing it for your sake when he tells you he wants to break up. But it still makes you angry. Soulmates are important to Akira, you know that, so you don’t understand why you grill him about them regardless, launching into an angry rant, asking him if he would leave you (a real person, for a concept) if a name suddenly appeared on his wrist overnight.

“Yes,” he says, and  _oh._

It doesn’t feel good.

When you’re home that night, you feel too shitty to do anything but distract yourself. Your leg still hurts, ebbing pain back and forth along your thigh, so you focus on it. It’s kind of comforting, because it’s the only thing you’ve got now. Akira’s left with no plans of coming back in neither romantic or platonic sense, so you’re more or less all alone with nothing else to go off. 

The whole thing pisses you off. How the hell does Akira even want you to find a soulmate when you don’t have a name? You can’t google him, you can’t add him on Facebook, and you sincerely doubt he has the liberty of doing either of those things if he hasn’t already. You need a way to release your anger onto something, because you’ve got  _nothing_ right now, and it’s all the fault of the guy that decided to break his femur out of nowhere. You kick your leg against something, hard, and the hot flush of pain that comes with it feels awful, but at least he feels it too.

(Somewhere far away, a boy winces and grabs hold of his shin.)

You log onto your computer and scroll through multiple pages of google results before you stumble across a forum that looks incredibly dated. The most recent post is from the 2nd of January 2013, no replies, and even that is staggered 4 years after the one before it. ‘Finding soulmates through pain’ a thread reads, and although the chance of the agitator stumbling on this particular page is almost null, you post anyway, hands jumping around on the keyboard so fast your parents can hear you typing from the other side of the house. You’re not even looking for him. You just want to let him know you’re pissed.

‘Which one of you fuckers broke your femur today,’ it says, and you’re happy with how appropriately angry it sounds, so you hit post.

You don’t get a reply for another five months, a couple of weeks after Akira gets a criminal record and his parents send him away to Yongen-Jaya to teach him a lesson.

‘Someone did the honours for me,’ it says. ‘Name’s Ryuji Sakamoto. Who are you?’


	2. "Man, I don't think hitting the post button has ever been this stressful."

Ryuji Sakamoto has been blank his entire life.

He’s never had a problem with it, not really.

Sure, there is the initial creep of disappointment when he’s last in his class to get a name—a bitter feeling that drags over the course of two years until it finally fades into apathy when he graduates junior high and stops checking for a mark in the mirror every morning. And sure, the idea of romance is cute; Ryuji is pretty convinced he’d have made a good boyfriend given the chance (not that fate ever gave him the opportunity to find out). But none of these things ever feel like enough to force him into bending over backwards to find a partner.

He knows what happens when desperation to find love outweighs a clear sense of judgement from second-hand experience, and he sees it almost every day as a deep dissatisfaction reflected in the way his mother slumps when she thinks he’s not looking, the way she recounts the undoubtedly abusive nature of his father with sparks of fondness that he’s always quick to put out.

If it was up to her, he’s sure she’d have never even left the bastard.

Even now, years after the last time he set foot in their house, she’ll still sometimes look at Ryuji in a way that’s just a touch too bittersweet not to prompt questioning.

“What?” he’ll ask, because it feels like he’s being scrutinised or pitied, and he deeply hates both of those things.

Slowly, his mother will smile at him, and sadly, (lovingly) she’ll answer.

"You deserved someone better, Ryuji. You really did.”

He’ll know she’s referring to his father as much as she’s referring to herself.

 

* * *

 

He and Akira become fast friends.

Looking back, he supposes it might have something to do with the way they’re both branded as delinquents and shoved to the same side-lines. Their friendship barrels one hundred miles an hour, full force honest like an open book that reads itself, no truths too bare and no questions to shy away from.

At least until the advent of a particularly sunny afternoon during the weekend.

Like is customary on weekends, Akira invites Ryuji over to the attic of Leblanc. They’re both so used to the routine that Akira knows to turn the console on even before he comes, and by the time Ryuji settles down on the floor with a pile of books, he’s already half-way through the second level.

“Hey, Akira?” Ryuji prompts, when Akira is distracted with a particularly difficult wave of bullet-hell.

“Yeah?”

“You’re not soulmates with anyone in the Phantom Thieves, are you?” The question seems innocuous enough to him that he doesn’t even bother looking up from his manga, so he doesn’t notice the sudden way Akira stills.

“Why are you asking?”

Ryuji yawns and rolls his shoulders. “Nah, no reason. You just seem to get along with the girls. Get kind of jealous of you sometimes, y’know,” he says, but there’s excess humour in his tone and light in his eyes and he’s barely not snorting.

Akira on the other hand, shows no trace of amusement.

Because _yes_ , he supposes his flirting has been running a little rampant recently. In all honesty, he hadn’t thought about it until now. It just felt natural to recede into that routine again, to patch up holes by filling them with shallow confessions, petty little dates that meant absolutely nothing, and adrenaline-inspired, late-night phone calls to Kawakami. (In retrospect, getting together with his teacher is probably a clearer sign of desperation than anything else).

But what can he say? He’s had big holes to fill lately.

“Are _you_?” Akira asks instead, hoping to avoid the question entirely.

“Am I what?” Ryuji doesn't have nearly the same investment in the conversation. Absentmindedly, he flips the page of the manga over to reveal a blonde man with a cowboy hat showing off the grills on his teeth.

“Soulmates with anyone in the Phantom Thieves.” There’s an odd glint of something bitter to it, but Ryuji’s miles too preoccupied to notice.

“Nah, I’m blank,” he says, matter-of-factly.

Ryuji doesn’t expect the intermittent video game music to suffer an abrupt pause. He doesn’t expect Akira to turn to him with an expression of surprise that he’s never seen on his indifferent poker face before, and he certainly doesn’t expect the waver to his voice when he asks his next question.

“You’re blank?”

Ryuji shifts in his seat and fiddles with a page of the manga on his lap.

“Yeah.” For barely a second, a look of recognition crosses Akira’s face. He opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but a few seconds pass in silence and it makes Ryuji feel more scrutinised than anything else. “What?” he asks, with an unsteadiness that almost circles around insecure.

“I’m...” There’s an unsure pause before Akira continues. “I'm sorry to hear that,” is what he decides to say.

Something about it feels awkward.

Maybe it’s related to the way Akira refuses to meet his eyes. Maybe it has something to do with the harsh silence, undisturbed by words or the shrill chiptune of retro video game music. Or maybe, it’s the clinical sympathy of his response, so far disconnected from the usual honesty of their friendship, like they haven’t breached every other topic on earth.

“It’s no big deal.” Ryuji says, because to him, it’s really not. “Never bothered me anyway.”

There’s still that God-awful, stiff silence, but Ryuji doesn’t know what else to say. He returns to his manga in an attempt to ignore it, and the sound of the game being unpaused takes a couple of seconds to catch up.

 

* * *

 

Ann’s affliction towards Akira has been harmless for the most part. When they’re in public, they play the façade of friends well, and the only reason Ryuji knows about their relationship is because he catches them (during a relatively unassuming instance of hand-holding) in the park while he's out on a run. As soon as he scouts them, he hides behind a tree and mouths an amused, ‘those bastards’ to himself, before snapping a sneaky picture - one he’s almost overeager to send to Akira that night.

‘And here I thought we told each other everything,’ he texts, in mock derision.

Although Akira’s average reply speed is slow at best and inconsistent at worst, his response comes almost immediately.

‘She’s not my soulmate,’ is what it reads, and it’s quickly followed by a double-text. ‘I think we’re just messing about until we find our proper partners.’

Ryuji feels jealous, he can’t exactly deny that, but it’s less of an all-consuming wildfire and more of a flickering candle. All it takes is one steady breath of pep talk, of ‘be a good friend to them, ryuji,’ to silence it into a thin trail of smoke. ‘No judging here man,’ he texts. ‘Just watch you don’t catch feelings and ditch the whole ‘finding soulmates’ part of the plan.’

On the other side of the message, Akira freezes. His fingers type a response before he can even think, but his mind pulls into manual just before they hit the send button.

‘I would never do that to her.’

He cringes.

With a couple of angry smashes against the screen, the backspace button on his phone tacs furiously into a repeating drone, held down for much longer than it takes the entire message to disappear into a blinking, vertical line.

Eventually, Akira forgoes replying entirely and falls face-first into his pillow.

 

* * *

 

“Ah, fuck.”

A sharp twist of pain stabs Ryuji in the back of the head. Ann turns around to face him, and she notices he’s stopped trailing behind her in favour of massaging his skull. They're in the underground of Shibuya Mall after a day of shopping, and the bustle of the metro is loud as ever as she scans him over.

“Is everything alright?” she asks, and he nods, begrudgingly

“Yeah,” he says, but to tell the truth he’s not so sure. “I mean, I think so,” he corrects, and Ann gets concerned enough over it that he feels the need to elaborate. “I just keep getting random pains out of nowhere lately.”

People pass by in thick crowds, hurriedly brushing past and congesting around them. Ann is still bothered by his sudden spike of pain, so she gestures for them to move to the side and wait below a couple of posters. With a sigh, she puts her shopping bags down and against the wall. Ryuji was nice enough to offer to hold two of hers, so they’re both slung around the arm he’s not using to subdue the pain.

“Let me see,” she says, and stands on her tiptoes to look over him. In turn, he lets go of his head so she can ruffle through his hair and find whatever she’s looking for.

After a couple of seconds, she withdraws from him. “Nope. Nothing,” she says.

Ryuji hums expectantly. “Figured.”

This has been happening everywhere on his body recently, but he’s always checked to find no symptoms or bruises. It’s a strange series of odd pains, rarely consistent with location or type. The more intense ones tend to be strangest, because they tend to thrum as though in time with his pulse, but they’re completely out of time with the actual beat of his heart, like watching a movie with the audio just a titch out of sync.

“How long has it been going on?” Ann asks. She’s flipping through her phone, looking for symptoms online.

“Uh, since Kamoshida screwed my leg up, I think.”

“And when was that?”

Ryuji takes the chance to rest and slumps against the wall. “Couple months ago, maybe? Somethin’ like that.” The first symptom he can really pinpoint is an incredibly painful flash of pain to his shin, the same night he’s stuck in the hospital with a broken femur.

Ann hmms. “You haven’t been feeling dizzy or tired, have you?”

“Nope,” he answers, so she keeps scrolling.

“Do you get a tingly feeling in your hands or feet, have trouble remembering things, or wake up tired a lot?”

He gives one last soothing rub to the back of his head before slinging one of the shopping bags across his other arm. “Actually, I’ve been missing out on sleep a lot,” he says, but Ann just lifts an eyebrow up at him. “I can’t really remember things in school either.”

“Staying up to play video games doesn’t count,” she says, with an edge of humour. “Neither does not studying for exams.”

“Hey! I’ve been studying!” he exclaims, with such force that it’s unlikely there’s any ounce of truth to it. She looks him over suspiciously, and it barely takes two seconds for him to break under the pressure of her sceptical gaze. “A little,” he mumbles, under his breath.

She laughs, and he laughs.

“Makoto’s not gonna be happy,” Ann says. Ryuji nods, and a wide, amused smile bunches his cheeks all the way up to his eyes.

“Which is why she’s not gonna know.”

“Oh, sneaky.” Ann’s voice is equally humoured. She puts her phone back into her pocket and runs her fingers through her hair. “Just keep in mind our final grades are displayed on the bulletin board anyway.”

Ryuji’s eyes widen.

“Crap!” he yells, so loudly that she wants to clasp her hand over his mouth and remind him they’re in a public place. “I totally forgot!”

This time, it’s just Ann that laughs, but her snorts trail off quickly. She takes the chance to look over him more closely, and there’s still remnants of concern in her apprehension.

“Seriously though, you should see a doctor about those random pains.”

Ryuji watches as she picks up her bags and he follows lead, separating himself from the wall with a tired sigh.

“I might,” he says.

She kicks him gently in the shin. “Do you _want_ me to worry?”

“Alright, alright. I will.” he corrects himself, but it’s just to placate her.

He’s sure it’s nothing, anyway.

 

* * *

 

Thud after thud, Ryuji’s trainers beat against the soft ground of the track. Running is always cathartic for him. One foot after the other, any stress he feels is fuzzed with repetition: left, right, left, right. It used to be bigger than that. Used to be about becoming the star of the track team and finding a scholarship—competing in the big leagues and whatnot. Really, it was all for his mother, but even good intentions couldn’t save him from Kamoshida.

“Are you keeping up?” Akira asks, from in front of him. Ryuji’s trailing a little bit behind, but he’s doing well all things considered. It has been a while since his last run, after all, but having Akira there to keep him from taking breaks too often definitely keeps him steady.

“Yeah, ‘s just my leg.”

“Alright,” Akira says, scouting for any places to sit on in distance. “We’ll take a break in a few minutes.”

They settle on a park bench: a weathered, wooden thing that looks just about sturdy enough to hold the two of them. Ryuji stretches himself out on it with a sigh, and takes to rubbing his leg as soon as he gets his breath back.

“Alright?” Akira asks, after he takes a sip from his water bottle.

“Course.” Ryuji replies. “Just wish my femur wasn’t actin’ up so bad.” He’s trying not to be too hard on himself, but it’s impossible not to compare when he used to run distances twice the same length without breaking a sweat.

Akira grips the water bottle harder.

“It’s your femur?” he questions, nonchalantly.

“Yeah. This thing right here.” Ryuji taps it to make his point. “It’s getting better though. Thing was completely broken after Kamoshida was done with it.” The way he says the name is bitter and spiteful, but that’s not what Akira focuses on.

“It was completely broken?” he asks, and yeah, there’s surprise in his voice (because anyone who has any idea how hard it is to break a femur should know it’s nothing to scoff at) but there’s more to it than that. It’s more stressed than his last question, like the chords in his throat are bending under an unseen tension.

“Oh yeah. Smashed clean in half. I passed out as soon as I got put on morphine.”

Akira turns to him. He stares at his leg with an odd sense of focus.

“When did you break it?” he asks, and the question is tense (unbelievably so) like the answer to it could make or break their entire friendship.

“Dunno. Bout five months ago?”

“You’re kidding,” he says, and Ryuji shakes his head.

“What d’you mean?”

Akira laughs, a long, drawn-out sigh that seems unstable – equally likely to burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter as it is to break off into tears.

“Fucking kidding.”

Ryuji leans forward in the seat to get a better look at Akira’s face. He’s not looking at him, just staring somewhere down at the floor, letting his curly hair envelop most of his face.

“Akira?” Ryuji prompts, and sees him grasp at his knees firmly.

Akira feels bitter. So, so bitter. He’d already done all he could for you: without fuss, without discussion, he plucked himself from your life when your future took you away from him.

Did you think it was _easy_? _Easy_ to block your number and pretend you didn’t exist? _Easy_ to pretend anything that came after was nearly as good?

He’d tried so many things with so many people in the hopes any of them would have _nearly_ the same punch. Because surely, if you weren’t his soulmate and he wasn’t yours, any blank person could replace you, right? And maybe, eventually, if he tried hard enough, he’d get his own soulmate, just like you did.

A soulmate.

The words sits oddly in his throat, like a meal that doesn't want to go down, and for a second he's worried he's going to choke on it. Stubbornly, it stays there, unmoving: an itch that can't be scratched. He doesn't know what to do about it, so he elects to ignore it and sit up enough to make note of Ryuji’s concerned expression. There’s never any internal debate about what he _should_ do, because the mere thought of keeping his mouth shut and consciously sabotaging two soulmates feels vulgar at best, and viscerally shitty at worst. There is still the distaste, stationary and bitter, but it's not nearly enough to stop him from acting. ('Besides,' he tells himself, 'if I truly broke up with you for your happiness, I’ve got no excuse not to secure the last push and confirm it.')

“Ryuji,” he starts, and he speaks with conviction. “I've got good news.”

 

* * *

 

“Do you believe me now?” Akira asks, as he stands over the laptop in his room and brings up the Wikipedia article for pain-bound soulmates.

“Holy shit,” is Ryuji’s answer. He slinks over to the chair to read it and Akira leans on it from behind him. “Holy shit,” he says again, but there’s a massive smile on his face this time; his happiness is so transparent and obvious that it comes through in his voice, cheeks upturned, on the verge of cracking in half.

“Happy?” Akira tries his best not to let his jealousy show in his voice, and he thinks it works. Either that, or Ryuji’s too lost in his excitement to notice. (Seems to be leaning more towards the latter anyway, because when Ryuji gets up from the chair he’s so ecstatic that he almost knocks it over.)

“Dude, you don’t even know.” He’s smiling so brightly that Akira can’t help but feel a disconnect with his own emotions. They’re a massive, gaping hole, and the only thing he can be grateful for is that it’s a massive, gaping hole of nothing, which is easier to hide than the flurry of needles that comes with anger, or the pool of guilt that’d be slurring in his chest if he’d blown this off.

Ryuji looks up at Akira and he’s shining, really shining.

“This is crazy. I’ve spent my whole life thinking I’m gonna be some loner,” Ryuji says, and _no_ , Akira is absolutely not responding to that. An upturned lilt twists Ryuji’s voice into disbelief, like he still can’t wrap his head around the fact he’s actually got someone out there. "I just can't believe it."

“Yeah, it’s crazy,” Akira says.

He doesn’t want to miss any beats here.

Even if Akira’s not being a model friend with the way any genuine joy is completely absent, he knows the way he should be feeling, and he knows that any decent friend in this situation would be faking it. In an effort to appear more enthusiastic, a constructed smile settles on his face. It feels artificial, but judging from what he can see of his reflection in the screen of the laptop, it looks just about genuine enough for Ryuji not to catch on.

“My mum is gonna be so relieved,” Ryuji says, and his enthusiasm ebbs away enough that he sits back down. “She’s blank too, so it broke her heart when I didn’t get my name.”

To Akira’s knowledge, blankness is not hereditary. The lack of a soulmate is not a result of genes as much as it is incompatibility. Those who are blank usually go on to be come unhappy individuals: people who rely on causing harm to others to be happy themselves. It becomes impossible to pair them in such a way that they bring joy to the other partner. It’s the reason Akira prefers to keep his blankness a secret. He doesn’t consider himself to be a bitter person, and he hopes that the more he proves his good nature to the world, the more likely he is to find a soulmate somewhere down the line.

So even now, when this whole situation is face-down, ass-up in his face, he’s doing his best to help.

“So, uh, you knew the girl I’m soulmates with?” Ryuji asks, and it brings Akira out of his stupor a little. He remembers he didn’t quite give the entire truth when he was explaining things on the way to Leblanc.

“Yeah. Five months ago, during lunchtime, I had to call an ambulance because she collapsed in school.”

“And it was ‘cause of her femur?”

“Course.” It’s an awful memory that fills him with a concoction of dread even now. _Lurching_ , he thinks, as he feels it draw thick lines of anxiety through his lungs. “It’s gotta be her.”

Ryuji’s foot taps on the ground. He’s so excited that it hurts Akira to look at him.

Distantly, some part of Akira’s mind chastises him. ‘No,’ it says, ‘this shouldn’t hurt,’ but it doesn’t quite work. If he was feeling empty before, he’s certainly not feeling empty now: the lurching pain twists into his chest and forces its way into his throat, tightening it with such sudden apparition that even his gulp feels forced.

“Can you, I dunno, tell me anything about her?”

Akira sighs, but it’s easily disguised with a stretch as a side effect of thinking about his question. And he does have to think about this, of course he does. Anything that suggests the two of them were together at any point is a mine he’d do well to stay clear of.

“I didn’t really know her that well,” he precedes, so that he doesn’t have to think as hard. “But she seemed fun. Honest, too. I think half the school knew she was blank.” (Which is way more than he can say for himself.)

“So, the cool type?”

Akira laughs. “Yeah. Something like that.”

Ryuji brings one of his feet up onto the chair and rests his head on his knee.

“Oh man. You don't think she'll be outta my league, do you?”

A little bit of the bitterness goes away with how endearing Ryuji is about the whole thing. Being a good friend feels more natural when he’s thinking more about how to ease Ryuji’s insecurity than he is about how screwed up the whole situation is.

"Of course not,” he says, as a grin settles on his face. “Come on, you're a phantom thief.”

Ryuji smiles in turn. It’s bright. Blinding, absolutely blinding. Akira knows it was the right thing to say.

(Music notes fill his ears.)

“Yeah, guess we do have that going for us, huh?” Ryuji rocks on the chair, pushing himself away from the desk with the foot he’s not using to prop his head up. “So uh,” he begins, and a troubled expression makes its way onto his face again. “How am I supposed to find her?” The trackpad clicks as Ryuji follows links to random search results, more as a distraction than with the intention of doing anything productive.

“Could message her on LINE.”

“Oh, d’you have her number?”

Akira takes a deep breath.

“No,” he says. To tell the truth, he blocked and deleted it straight after the break-up. Wise decision, considering how many times he’d curled up in his bed and flipped through his phone desperately, trying to see if there was any way to recover it. ‘Please come back to me; I miss you’ he can imagine himself saying, and the cold wash of relief at knowing he’d dodged the bullets of the early-breakup stage rushes through him.

“Oh, that sucks,” Ryuji hums. Nonchalantly, he goes back to clicking on random websites. Akira looks over his shoulder to find he’s on some dated forum, where those afflicted with pain-bound soulmates share their experiences. His eyes skim over it lazily, trailing after each comment, until Ryuji scrolls back up and arrives at the most recent.

“Wait, Ryuji, hold on —” Akira says, and shoves Ryuji’s hand away from the trackpad.

“Huh? What?”

Akira reads the most recent post over and over again in his head, until Ryuji takes note of it with an audible gasp.

“Shit, that’s not her, is it?”

“It might be.” Akira’s hesitant when he clicks her account information, but he can’t quite articulate why. He reads the date of birth, the profile description, and everything about it adds up, but… “Yeah, I think it is; that’s her birthday,” he says, pointing to it with his mouse.

Ryuji sucks in a deep breath.

“Oh man,” he says, and Akira can’t help but agree. His heart twists painfully, and it annoys him how such a tiny scrap has almost completely managed to reopen the wound that took five months to close.

“Then, uh, I should probably reply to that post, huh?” Ryuji asks. It’s a rhetorical question, but Akira nods anyway, eager to do anything that dulls the eagerness of kicking Ryuji out and messaging you himself. For a little while, Ryuji's fingers gently trail across the keyboard (with no-where near enough pressure to press the keys in), like he can't make him mind up on what to actually type. “Man," he says, eventually, "I got nothing.”

There’s a little bit of thoughtful quiet where Akira re-reads the post. ‘Which one of you fuckers broke your femur today,’ it says, and Akira can’t help but understand why the aggressive tone has Ryuji feeling intimidated. You sound downright pissed.

“Just introduce yourself,” he supplies, dispassionately.

“But how?”

Akira sighs. “My name is Ryuji Sakamoto. Please have sex with me,” he says, in deadpan, and Ryuji elbows him in the ribs.

“Dude! I’m not gonna come off all desperate. Doesn’t that turn girls off?”

“Hm, depends on the girl,” he says, and it’s just as monotone, but there’s a salacious grin on his face.

“You would know,” Ryuji mumbles; there’s traces of bitterness in it, but it’s less out of genuine jealousy and more just frustration from being put on the spot. He stares at the screen for a moment or two before the stress gets to him and he leans back on the chair to groan up at the ceiling.

“Feeling the pressure?”

“Ugh, you’ve got no idea, man.”

Ryuji buries his face into his hands and kicks at the ground with his feet.

“Don’t you know this girl anyway? What does she like?”

Akira looks away.

Half of him wants to say ‘me’, and the other half wants to describe exactly what she likes, to say ‘she loves it when you sink into her neck, when you trail your kisses downwards _slowly_ , when you press her really close and tell her she’s everything you’ll ever need (even if it’s not true).’

But he shrugs, because they’re all memories that have been buried for a while and do nothing but make him annoyed when they resurface.

“Really? Nuthin’?”

“Like I said, we didn’t know each other that well.”

Even when it rolls off his tongue, it burns like a lie, dripping acid into his chest and poking at a hole that’s been there for a while.

“Oh whatever, I’m just gonna type some shit up.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Akira watches intently as Ryuji makes an account and types up a response. It takes a few tries, and the backspace key works overtime as Ryuji flips between adding his contact information or leaving it vague (he comes to the conclusion it’s best for him not to post any personal information on a public forum, regardless of how little traffic it gets).

Akira definitely feels scared, that’s a given. He hasn’t seen you since the day of your break-up, when he lectured you on soulmates, called your parents, and left you on the hospital bed. But most worrying is that he’s probably a little more excited to see you again than he’s not, and that’s the bloodiest red flag he’s ever fucking come across.


	3. Three Swarms of Butterflies

A bustling rabble of people is alive with chatter in the bowels of an undisclosed metro station. Somewhere among them, two teenagers: Ryuji and Akira, stand on a platform following a frenzied exit from a train. Respectively, one holds a large bouquet of red roses tied with a thick, white ribbon, and the other frantically clicks through a navigation app, trying his best to figure out which way he should be facing to walk to Nagaike Park.

“Oh man. I’m gonna be late,” Ryuji grumbles to himself, rocking on his heels impatiently.

Akira, on the other hand, does not appear nearly as agitated. “We’re already late,” he remarks numbly. “Fifteen minutes late.”

Ryuji’s eyes widen dramatically. "No way. You’re kidding.”

A woman trailing a large, wheeled duffel knocks Akira on the shoulder, but with enough determination, he finds the patience to dismiss it with a huff and a discrete sweep of his hand through his hair.

This whole outing is a bad idea. He knows that, knew it from the very beginning, so how come his common sense proved so lacklustre when it came to refusing Ryuji’s puppy eyes? Honestly, it should have been a hard no, even without the disaster that was this entire morning, because on top of the fact Ryuji always leaves getting ready to the last minute, he insisted on dragging Akira to the market for a bouquet of flowers, too.

“No. You were supposed to be there for quarter to three, right?” he asks, and lifts his smartphone up to the sky, where it still struggles with a vapid, single bar. Among other instances of bad luck during the day, the capricious nature of his phone’s data is not lost on him.

“I should have been there for half past two!” The panic encasing Ryuji’s wide eyes and overzealous tone finds no reflection in Akira’s response.

“Oh,” he begins, as drearily and matter-of-factly as everything he’s said before. “In that case, you’re already half an hour late.”

With an irate gasp, Ryuji almost uses the bouquet to club Akira’s head. But bar his marginally more formal outfit (think: slightly less tacky shirt), the flowers are all that he has to his name in the intention of making a good first-impression (because punctuality is sure as hell a goner), so he thinks better of it.

“Well, now what?”

“I’m still trying to figure out where we are.”

“Shit, is there no like, map around here or somethin’?”

To tell the truth, Akira is still having a hard time trying to grasp why Ryuji didn’t offer to meet with you in a place he was familiar with. Sure, Shibuya square is kind of a busy place to find someone you’ve never met before, and maybe the fishing spot in east Shinjuku is a little shady for a first-timer. But there’s many places he can think of that don’t look like locations bookmarked by prolific serial killers, or places where it’s easier to get trampled than it is to find somewhere to sit down. The ramen restaurant in Ogikubo is a good place to start, but even aside from that, parks litter Shibuya left and right, and they’re all easier than taking a trek to some random park in the middle of nowhere just because it was the place _you_ suggested first.

(“I just didn’t want to delay meeting her any longer,” Ryuji had justified, and Akira supposes he’s paying for his impatience now; if he’d been a little calmer about the whole thing, he wouldn’t have missed his stop.)

With a defeated sigh, Akira scours around for maps and notices a subway route outline that looks a little too oversimplified to be of any help. Still, it doesn’t stop a crowd of people from gathering around it, flocking like sheep and trying to figure out where and which way to go.

Among them, a girl that looks suspiciously like…

Like…

“Oh, fuck”.

“What?” Ryuji inquires, and barely has the chance to follow Akira to where he slinks away to hide behind a banner advertising men’s perfume. “Dude, what’s gotten into you?”

‘You weren’t supposed to be here,’ he thinks. ‘You weren’t supposed to see him. _More importantly, he wasn’t supposed to see you.’_

“Just --” excuses come through his head one hundred miles an hour: I’m tired (from what?); I just got hit with the crimson wave (wrong gender, genius); I owe dirty money to one of the bulked-up yakuza blokes standing on the side smoking cigarettes and if they see me they’re going to skin me alive like a -- “it’s just a leg cramp,” he finishes, and it’s so predictable and transparent that the little internal cringe he experiences helps him fake the pain he’s supposed to be feeling.

Thankfully, whether out of chance or genuine belief that Akira would never lie to him, Ryuji is gullible enough to fall for it.

“Oh. Do you need to sit down?” he asks, full of nothing but concern. “I guess we have been standing around a lot.”

Akira shakes his head through gritted teeth. “No, it’s alright. Go over to the map and figure out where we are,” he instructs him, and points to where he’s convinced he saw you, standing around looking lost.

This doesn’t go over as smoothly, and Ryuji frowns at him. “You sure? ‘Cause it kind of sounds like you need –”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

The force with which Akira shoves Ryuji in your direction almost makes him stumble over. He doesn’t quite understand what Akira’s problem is, but he neglects his over-eagerness all the same, giving him no more than a half-concerned, half-offended glance as he makes his way over to the map.

With a deep breath, Akira settles against the back of the advert and takes to watching you from the side-lines.

 

* * *

 

Truthfully, the map doesn’t help Ryuji's situation. It’s not even a map, not really, more of a subway outline that takes a lot of artistic liberties in terms of distance and location. The only thing he can infer from it is that he’s in Tamasakai Station, which seems to be a mysteriously undisclosed number of kilometres away from Minami-Osawa, the station he should have departed from. Still, he tries his best to figure out what general direction Nagaike Park is in, even if there’s nothing in either the enclosed environment of the subway station or the map that could provide foundation for a reliable guess. Eventually, as the people around him confirm their next route, the crowd thins, and he’s left standing there with someone who looks even more confused than he feels.

At first, he gives you no more than a precursory glance, more a reflexive reaction to being alone with you than anything else, but it sticks. He finds, with some gentle apprehension, that it’s a little difficult to look away.

So he stares (without prejudice or assumption), and takes note of your shoes, hair, and all the details he scarcely pays attention to, like the way your lips tuck into each other as you concentrate on deciphering what you can of the map. And then you turn to him, and he sees _everything_ about your slightly troubled expression: like the way your frown tightens and straightens into a long, thin line, or the inquisitive curve to your eyebrow as you –

“Uhm, can I help you?” you ask eventually, and _whoops_.

He’s been caught.

“Uh, sorry! I just…” Oddly, he finds his eyes drawn to you even now, when he should be wrapping up his stray stares and pretending to find sudden interest in the map. “You just look kind of lost.” As justification, it feels like an excuse at best, but it’s the only explanation he has (bar just asking if you’re a magnet or something).

Understanding flashes across your face. “Oh, yeah. Absolutely,” you say, with such assuredness it’s almost funny. “It’s my first time in this area of Japan, so...” With a sheepish glance (shortness suggestive of a customary politeness), you take note of the bouquet of roses he’s holding. “To tell the truth, I don’t really know where I’m going. I think I got off too early.”

He laughs a little, a soft chortle that seems so genuine you feel a butterfly in your stomach awaken.

“Ditto,” he says. “But I think I got off too late.”

“So, in other words, we’re both lost?”

Now he’s smiling really, very widely. You like the way it takes over almost the entirety of his face, pinching his cheeks and dimpling his eyes into little slits.

“Looks like it, yeah.” He rubs the back of his head. “And to top it off, I’m really late.”

You snort. “If you think that’s bad, look at this.” With another little laugh, you pull your phone out of your pocket and present its black screen in his direction. You make a show of pressing the power button, which does nothing to change the display. “My phone ran out, so I don’t even know what time it is.”

There’s another laugh, but this time it’s both of you, together. A spark crackles through your neck, twisting into your chest – and with it comes a rush of excitement that fries the string in your throat dry. It’s strange; very strange. It almost feels like your own body is malfunctioning the same way circuits do. You take a deep breath to calm it: to settle all the stray sparks and ease the current to a steady ebb and flow, and you notice (with some strange version of hypersensitivity) that he does it too.

When you look away (for barely a second), it feels like a switch has been disconnected.

“Ah well, at least now we can use the old ‘I was helping a lost tourist’ excuse,” he says, a little sheepishly, and grins at you.

God, his smile.

(Another butterfly rouses.)

“I guess so,” you say, genuinely flabbergasted at the clarity of its appearance, like you could trace an outline of its silhouette just from the way it beats against the side of your stomach.

“Where you tryin’ to get to, anyway? I can’t promise I’ll know how to help, but…” When he speaks, flashes of images throw a blanket over you: of a fuzzy peach, delicious and lush, and intertwined feet beneath a blanket of warmth you feel an immediate need to burrow inside; not a bright neon light flashing ‘safety! safety!’ but an innate feeling – like you just _know_.

Barely, you find the strength to speak, but even then, you’re overwhelmed by the familiarity of someone who has proven himself to be nothing more than a stranger. ( _A stranger!_ )

“Uh,  I – uh, a park.”

He looks at you, eyebrow jutted gently.

“A park?”

You scramble to think of the name, but it dangles from beneath the fold of your tongue, just out of reach. There’s a flash of something across his face, and then his eyes are open, wide, wide open, and his heart beats erratically, in pace with yours.

“It wasn’t –” he pauses. “It wasn’t Nagaike, was it?”

Your nod has a sharp, surprised quality to it, mostly out of genuine disbelief that he guessed correctly, because out of all the possible parks that exist around this area, surely it’s such a coincidence that he knows –

And then it hits.

“Oh! You must be –”

“Yeah! I’m Ryuji!”

“Ah! I’m –”

“Yeah! From the forum!”

“Yeah!”

“You mean that we both –”

“We were both late! Can you believe that?”

When the both of you burst into laughter, it’s a flurry: a rambling mess of squirming and feathery lightness that comes hand in hand with the flutter of your heart and feet.

You’ve never had this with anyone. Sure, you’ve had butterflies, but these things feel like giant atlas moths, like doves, and swans, and albatross of wingspans unseen (although when you see the blinding brightness of his shy grin, you think that maybe moths are still the most fitting metaphor. They are, after all, drawn to the light).

“So uh,” he starts, and the inner tug-of-war he has with his own eyes to stop staring at you is completely transparent. The plane of his face curves away in an attempt to focus on something else, but his eyes compromise the distance, following you like magnets. “These are for you,” he mumbles, softly, and lifts the bouquet of flowers up to his chest.

Shyly, you take them from him, and when your fingers ever so gently trace his, the intersection of skin where they meet erupts into bonfires and sparks, crackles and whips. Softly, he recoils, and it’s all it takes for you to be entirely sure he feels it too.

‘Wow,’ he mouths. “This is –” a gulp breaks it apart. “It’s strong.”

Your nod is haphazard, but all the more assured.

“I didn’t think it was gonna be like this,” you agree. “I’ve never –”

“Never felt it before?”

“No.”

He’s mimicking you now, nodding with such subtle movement you’re positive he can’t be aware of it. The urge to draw him in is overwhelming, but what little dapples of cologne you can smell from where you’re standing are already enough to bring a swirly wobble to your knees, so you keep your distance.

Oddly, you don’t feel insecure. You did this morning, when you got dressed into eight different outfits before making your mind up, and you did this afternoon, when you realised your phone didn’t charge overnight and you missed your first train.

It all feels for nought now, all so insignificant that you can scarcely remember what anxiety is supposed to feel like.

“It’s good though,” you add, because you sure as hell can’t pretend it isn’t.

“Oh yeah,” he responds enthusiastically, and offers his hand for you to take. “It’s great.”

 

* * *

 

(There are three swarms of butterflies.)

 

* * *

 

Akira smiles to himself.

It’s a good feeling, he thinks, to see the two of you finally meet.

Maybe it’d be nicer if he didn’t have to hide; if the support he felt for Ryuji (and you) didn’t have to be pressed against the side of a wall that you can’t see and buried in his little hidden fist pumps. Sure, it’s hard to pretend there aren’t little sprouts of feelings long buried when he looks at you, and there might be a little bit of distaste when the two of you smile at each other with thick congestions of saccharine.

But that’s the case for any ex, isn’t it? Resurfacing feelings are surely temporary. He’s just a little nostalgic, is all. It’ll be fine.

He’ll be fine.

 

* * *

 

(Three is not an even number.)

 

* * *

 

A full twenty-five minutes of lively chatter come and go in the underground subway station before Ryuji thinks about Akira again. He can’t even remember what subjects have been breached, he just knows he’s having a lot of fun, laughing with you like nothing could put him in a bad mood.

“Oh, I forgot to say,” he begins, chipping at the end of a burst of laughter that tumbles all the way from your stomach (and he notes this with pride) at a joke he’d quipped a couple moments prior.

“What is it?” you ask, voice still a little raw with warmth. The rumble of another train lolls in the tunnel, so you make the effort to move and make way for the line of people around you to get on, and Ryuji follows cue.

“One of your old classmates is here with me,” he says, and proceeds to twine his fingers together. “I was kinda nervous, so I asked him if he could come with until I got to the park.” You look around, but there’s no familiar face in sight. Ryuji notices, and gestures nonchalantly to the banner Akira is hiding behind. “He’s waiting there, he says. “D’you wanna see him?”

“Yeah, course. Who is it?”

Ryuji leads the way, carving a path from the congested crowd of people that you closely trace.

“D’you remember Akira?” he asks.

You stop.

“Akira?”

Ryuji looks back at you to make sure you’re still following, but when he finds you stopped dead in your tracks, he takes a couple of steps back to get close to you again.

“Yeah. The one that called the ambulance for you a couple months back when the whole femur thing happened.” He looks back at you, sheepishly rubbing the back of his head with his arm. “Sorry ‘bout that, by the way.”

Still gobsmacked, you nod numbly, and hurry to answer him. “It’s – it’s fine.” It comes out a little disconnected, and Ryuji must pick up on it, because his look turns to concern.

“Nah, that thing hurt like shit.” His attempts for a comforting smile do not go unnoticed, and even without thinking about it, your own face reacts – pulled taut at the cheeks with how your grin spreads.  “Trust me, I know.” It’s funny how fast your nerves ease, how fast you forget about Akira in favour of standing a little closer to Ryuji until you look behind the banner he’s supposedly hiding behind and see him slumped against it, scrolling through his phone.

At first, he doesn’t even notice you’re there, but when he sees you, it’s with a double-take that sends him to his feet almost immediately. His eyes are wide open, and everything about the stiffness of his form suggests he did not intend on being seen.

You’re not surprised, but it still hurts in an odd, distant way.

“Look who I found,” Ryuji says, and points to you, _presents you,_ almost, like an item of extreme value from a museum. His gullible reaction to Akira’s helpless look is a clear enough sentiment.

He has no idea. Akira hasn’t told him.

“I was wondering where you went,” Akira says to him, in a casual tone that borders on sheepish just enough that you can read into it. He’s wearing a neutral expression, but it’s thinly spread, and all it takes to shatter the glass is one look at you. “Hey,” he says. “It’s been a while.”

You lift an eyebrow at him, just to let him know you’re onto his game before you reply.

“Yeah, it has.”

He’s nervous, you can tell.

“I –” he begins, and the next thing he says is just innocuous enough to pass as an introduction to Ryuji, but it’s a desperate excuse to you, a plea for forgiveness that begs you not to slip details of your relationship. “I told Ryuji about you being his soulmate.”

It surprises you; he can see it on your face.

“Wait. _You_ told him?”

Akira’s breath of relief when Ryuji cuts in to elaborate is audible; when you hear it, you pity it about as much as it annoys you.

“Oh yeah, he told me everything.” Ryuji says, almost shyly. “I really owe him one."

There’s a beat of pure silence, and it means nothing to Ryuji, who’s tone deaf to the bitter anger in your grimace and the guilty edge to Akira’s. It means a little more to you, who’s seeing your ex-boyfriend for the first time since he left and cut off all contact with you. But it means the most to Akira, who’s entire life hinges on what you say next. How you react. Whether you decide that now is a good time to hit him with the lecture you’ve probably been letting stew for the past five months.

“Thanks,” you finally say. “I owe you one, too.”

This time, even Ryuji hears him sigh in relief.

 

* * *

 

“How did it go?” Akira asks, two nights after the outing to Nagaike park.

Turmeric and cumin define the thick and heavy savour of curry about Leblanc. Ryuji shovels forkfuls of it down his throat as he looks up at him – and the brightness of his demeanour is so transparent that Akira doesn’t even need a verbal response to know the answer.

He is, of course, referring to the breadth of four and a half hours between Akira’s swift escape onto the next subway and seven-thirty PM, when darkness overtakes the sky and you sheepishly excuse yourself from Ryuji to catch the first train home.

“It was the best time of my life,” Ryuji says, and Akira rolls his eyes almost immediately. “Nah, for real. I could have died happy just holding her hand.”

“So cheesy,” Akira laughs.

Normally, Ryuji would get a little defensive, but there’s no hint of offence (not even in good humour) in this instance. There’s just an unrivalled good mood, so unshakable Akira doesn’t think he’d have the artillery to put a chip in it.

“You’ll know when you find yours, man,” is all he says, still with that dumb smile on his face.

Ryuji expects the soft sheen of awkwardness that comes with the next silence, but it’s more a conclusion drawn from subconscious pattern-recognition than it is out of genuine thought or scrutiny. He takes the chance to look at Akira, leant over his own plate of curry (almost untouched), and observe the pointless way his fork trails the side of the plate.

“How does it feel?” Akira asks, and looks up at Ryuji to notice he’s being stared at.

“How does what feel?”

“Her,” he answers, resolutely, and then corrects himself. “Being with her. What’s it like?”

“Oh.” Another bright smile (one singular instance in a series, like stars taking turns to line his teeth) takes him hostage. “I’ve never felt anything else like it. It just all feels… so strong, y’know?

He thinks he knows.

“Can you describe it?” The question is anxious and insecure, so much so that Akira needs to clear his throat before he allows himself to speak again. “In words?”

Ryuji has little skill in articulating himself; it probably has something to do with the disproportionality between how much he feels and how much he thinks about what he’s feeling, and it reflects in his momentary frustration, as he kicks gently at the air with his feet and scrunches his face in thought.

“Think, uh, really big butterflies.”

Akira laughs again.

“And maybe like, imagine an electric shock when you touch. But it’s not a bad shock. Just kind of, intense.”

Ryuji’s lost in a sweet haze of happiness, recounting the afternoon in Nagaike for the umpteenth time. Akira, meanwhile, is slowly sobering, little chortles trailing off into silence.

“Your eyes just – follow them, and when they find them, they’re just stuck in place.”

His smile falls from his face.

“Just, when you’re around them, everything feels _right_. Know what I mean?”

Not as a full realisation, but as a soft ebb muted almost entirely by denial, it strikes him, that he does know.

(Or at least, he _did_.)

“Not really,” he answers.

(Maybe, if he really, really tries, he still can.)

 

* * *

 

Akira likes Ann.

She’s pretty: her blonde hair looks gorgeous undone, when it’s falling in shambles around her collar and bare back; her lips are lush and plump when they caress him; her voice curls into itself (tight at the edges) when she’s close, and he loves swallowing her moans with his lips as she shudders against him.

When his eyes are open, she’s the prettiest girl he’s ever seen.

“Hey, Akira hold on --”

It’s satisfying to see her curl away from him when he doesn’t let up. His hand gets trapped between her legs when she crosses them tightly to stop him, and that, too, is satisfying, even if in doing so she displays the name of another splayed across her shoulder blades.

“Hold on. You’re not close yet,” she repeats, and how nice is that? Even on the throws of orgasm, she’s thinking about his pleasure.

“It’s fine,” he laughs, mumbles into her skin, and curves into her back to kiss her.

“No,” she retorts. She shoves his arm off her and to the side, where he grasps at the sheets as her legs hook around his waist. “You need to have fun, too.”

As someone to mess around with, she’s perfect; and if he was willing to open that can of worms, he’d be sure she’d make the perfect girlfriend, too.

So he listens to her. He lets his moans out, rocks against her, and closes his eyes.

(That’s where he makes his first mistake, really.)

“You’re perfect,” he whispers into her ear, because he’s skirting too close to the precipice to speak normally without cracking his voice. “So beautiful.”

His legs shake when his pace stutters, and Ann responds with more of her pretty little moans.

Pretty, so pretty.

Against the darkness of his eyelids he imagines her, feels the hot friction where she brushes against his skin. It’s difficult to concentrate with everything so hot and foggy, like his mind is trying to detangle his thoughts but there’s too many all coming at once: friction, and friction, and blonde hair and gasping and moans and everything all at once and he can’t think anymore.

And then it comes.

Among the flurry (while every bit of his mind is too distracted with sex and sweat), an apparition appears; takes the shape of love – the kind he hasn’t felt ever since you left, ever since you were taken from him. It bends, coils his heart and twists it so hard he can barely breathe, because God it’s strong, God it’s so much more than everything else, God he’s being swallowed up by fire; it’s up to his chest now, up to his collar, up to his nose and now he really can’t breathe because God he _loves_. He _loves_ so much.

(When he peaks, his eyes are closed.)

“I love you,” he says. “I missed you so much.”

And then: a name.

It’s not Ann’s.

 

* * *

 

Akira doesn’t become aware of what he’s done until every remnant of the post-orgasm fades from his head and he opens his eyes to witness Ann’s hurt expression staring back at him.

“Shit,” he says, and pulls out of her in a frantic race, because as soon as it hits, it comes full force. “I’m sorry. That was, it was --”

“It’s alright,” she says.

The gasping anxiety chills into guilt and dread.

“No. I’m sorry.”

Ann turns her head away from him. He doesn’t know what to say, which is a shame, because the unbearable silence pushes a sore sickliness onto his stomach that would be far better gone. She sits up, and Akira notices with another surge of guilt that her legs are tightly closed and her arms are crossed self-consciously in front of her chest.

It doesn’t look like she knows what to say either. (How awful is that? Bubbly, chatty, lovely Ann doesn’t know what to say.)

She rubs her bare shoulder before standing up and reaching for her leggings, but she doesn’t do anything with them. Just holds them in her fingers awkwardly for a little while.

“I mean, I know I’m not your soulmate, but…” she finally speaks. Her tone doesn’t reveal significant sadness. In general, she doesn’t look particularly upset that he was thinking about someone else in his orgasm, but then, now that he thinks about it, why would she be? It’s not like she had any expectations for a future with Akira. Even at the beginning, Ann had made her own feelings clear. “It’s still kind of rude to be thinking about someone else, right?”

Akira just nods.

“Maybe you need to get together with whoever this other girl is?” she offers, and given how offended she’s probably feeling, it’s remarkable she’s trying to help him at all.

“No, it’s --” Akira begins, but to tell the truth he’s got no idea where that sentence would even go. “Just forget about it, please,” he asks instead.

With a deep breath, Ann shimmies into her leggings.

Ah, so she’s not staying the night.

(Not like it surprises him.)

“Alright,” she says. Briefly, she looks about the room, as though she’s deciding whether she should sit back down on the bed (and talk to Akira for a little while longer, help him figure things out) or put the rest of her clothes on and go back home. “I hope… uh, this thing sorts itself out, alright?” she says, and waits for Akira’s reply.

He doesn’t respond.

With another long sigh, she puts her top on.

 

* * *

 

 _Ryuji, 19.28:_  
Ann, text back asap. I wanna tell u something important.

 _Ann, 19.33:_  
What’s going on? Is everything alright?

 _Ryuji: 19.33:  
_ You know how I’m supposed to be blank?

 _Ann, 19.33:_  
Yeah?

 _Ryuji, 19.34:  
_ Turns out I’ve actually got a soulmate lol. We’re just bound through pain, not names.

 _Ann, 19.34:_  
Omg, no way!! I’m so happy for you!!  
_Ann, 19.35:_  
Have you met them yet?

 _Ryuji, 19.35:_                                          
Yeah. I hate to sound cheesy, but it was love at first sight. Everything about them is just perfect.

 _Ann, 19.36:_  
Awww!! that’s so cute. Congrats, honestly.

 _Ryuji, 19.36:_  
Thanks. I really can’t screw this up now, lmfao.

 _Ann, 19.36:_  
I’m sure they’ll like you even if you make a fool out of yourself, haha.  
_Ann, 19.37:_  
Before I forget to ask, what’s their name?

 

* * *

 

Akira can’t eat.

Nothing on his plate is worth the trouble of opening his mouth.

 

* * *

 

You don’t notice him; not as much as you notice Ryuji.

He sees this with excruciating detail, because during the short gasps of time where he waits with Ryuji for you outside of the school gates and he sees you skip over to them like you’re on top of the world, he’s always looking at you.

Usually, he excuses the genuine tearing he feels inside of himself as an expected feeling. This whole issue is a complicated mess, but at least he can declare himself the third wheel with confidence. Ann hasn’t texted him since the last time they met up, and although he’s certainly not blaming her, it’s made the empty space in his bed all the more obvious. In general, he feels like a loner clinging to the last few hints of romance he has, desperately squeezing every last bit of satisfaction out of his relationships (he and Makoto have been getting kind of close, and Kawakami still answers whenever she’s free) until they feel dry and pointless.

He knows what he wants. He’s got that far.

Surely, he’d have to layer denial on himself thickly enough to bury the majority of his intelligence not to. Ryuji drew the parallels for him a couple of weeks back, anyway, and he’s not keen on closing his eyes just so he can’t see his own reflection in Ryuji’s doe-eyed looks.

‘Everything feels right,’ he remembers Ryuji saying, and to tell the truth, now that he’s really looking at you, it doesn’t feel right, not really. But it definitely feels worse when he’s not looking at all, so he’s brave enough to admit it’s probably because you’re not looking back.

“Whenever I see you, it always feels like we’ve been apart for way too long,” he hears you say to Ryuji, and funnily enough, he finds himself agreeing, even though you’re not speaking to him.

Ryuji laughs. “Come on, we saw each other yesterday.”

“Still too long.”

You’re dipped into a kiss that tries to go somewhere further (mostly through Ryuji’s direction), but you push against his chest and move back before it has the chance to. Akira is grateful for it. His knuckles have already turned white, and the only thing Ryuji did was plant a kiss on your lips.

When the three of you walk to the subway station, you’re in the middle. It’s a curse, really, because whenever he catches himself spacing out he realises he’s walking a little closer to you than he was before, and he’s had to remind himself to step away countless times before you finally get there. He departs from you at the station, and he feels an odd levity that reveals itself as anxiety when Ryuji wraps his arm around your waist possessively on the crowded train.

It always surprises him how quickly memories from five months back turn invasive.

He swears he can feel the pressure of your skin against the tips of his fingers: a soft sweep, almost not there at all, as his arms (wrapped around you) run along the indentation down the centre of your back. He needs to coil the wires, solder your body to his, close the gaps and fix the circuit, so he reaches out.

And then he realises what he’s doing.

Like burnt, his hand jitters back.

 

* * *

 

It’s with a bittersweet thrum that Akira notes you don’t hate him for leaving you those six months ago. Even when Ryuji is turned away, and the two of you are alone in a brief second of (buzzing, fizzing) eye-contact, there’s no sense of anger or frustration.

Realistically, he should be happy about it. It means you’ve got no reservations, that you’re not going to hold his decision against him and the worries he had over your reunion will remain unrealised. But it doesn’t make him happy, not at all.

He knows the sheer absence of any resentment towards him is not a result of forgiveness, but of indifference. You don’t _care_ about him. Not when you’re wrapped so closely around Ryuji on the way to the subway, and Akira has to remind himself to step away from you.

The past means nothing to you now that you’ve got him. He only wishes he could say the same.

 

* * *

 

Saturday evening date in Leblanc, nearly one month into your relationship with Ryuji. It’s a deceptively warm day. Rainclouds loll in the sky in thick cumulations of grey, taking turns to cover the sun like castle fortifications, hoarding it in ebbs until it peeks through and colours the alleys outside of Leblanc in brighter light.

Ryuji feeds you a little bit of his food, and you take it into your mouth shyly, giving a short, sideways glance over to where Akira is slumped over the counter. He pretends he’s not looking, but it’s not hard to see he’s unsuccessful in pulling the wool over your eyes. It’s not the first time you’ve caught him staring. _Probably won’t be the last, either_ , he admits to himself, with long-established resignation.

When it comes to paying the bill, Ryuji is quick to insist on footing all of it. You try to argue otherwise, but he’s too kind, too insistent. Even when he realises he doesn’t have any cash on him, he runs out of the shop in search of a cash machine before you can say anything, telling Akira not to let you pay under any circumstances.

When he leaves, you stare at the door wistfully for a while (like having to tear your eyes from him is  difficult even when he’s no longer in periphery) before you finally turn to Akira, and even then, it’s with an incredulous, confused look that has half the depth of the look you had when you were staring at a slab of wood.

“You’re always staring at me,” you say.

He smiles.

“Am I?”

You nod, and he hums. Nonchalantly, he straightens from behind the counter and walks to the front of it, hands in his pockets.

“I haven’t noticed," he says.

There’s a while where the two of you don’t say anything, so you settle into it, taking lazy bites of the cake Ryuji was feeding you.

“How have you been doing?” he asks. The relaxed slouch in his posture is betrayed by the expectant quality to his eyes. This same question was asked once before, the first time the two of you were alone after the reunion on the station.

Back then, you had bitingly told him to clarify what he meant. (“Are you asking out of curiosity, or just because you want to know whether I’m over you up and leaving?”)

“I’m good,” you say this time. “Ryuji and I are doing well.”

“I can tell.” With a slow sigh, he walks to your table. There’s been no customers for the past two hours bar you and Ryuji, (Leblanc is always slow on a Saturday,) so he forgoes his job at the front of the bar to sit in front of you. “You love him, don’t you?”

“Without a doubt.” Your head is propped up with one of your arms, in a relaxed pose that’s in no way discomforted or aggressive. For a moment, a flash of sadness crosses your face, and it’s there so briefly he would have missed it had he not already been staring. “You’ll find yours, too, you know,” you say, and he knows you believe it completely. “You pissed me off with the whole break-up thing, but I still know you’re too nice of a person to be blank forever.”

The things Akira wants to say toss and turn in his head, fighting for space until one wins and slithers slowly to the back of his throat.

“I think I might have already found her.”

Wide eyes. Your form straightens. You’re surprised, but you must not realise what he means, because you look happy for him.

“That’s great!” you say with genuine enthusiasm, as a smile flutters across your face. “It’s intense, isn’t it? So much more than just having a normal fling.”

When he realises what you said, it zips through his spine with a trail of goosebumps. A shiver rocks through his body, convulsing his insides in invisible tremors, like they’ve all decided to forfeit their jobs for making this feeling stronger.

‘A normal fling.'

Is that what he was to you?

Even his best fake smiles can’t cover up the heartbroken grimace that comes as a result of the piercing pain he’s feeling. Yours fades away in turn (your eyebrows jutting into concern), but you still don’t get it. You just _don’t get it._ He’s about to cry here, right in front of you; he’s about to stand up again and reach over the table to kiss you on the lips, and you just. don’t. get it.

“Yeah,” he says. “It really is.”

 

* * *

 

As soon as Ryuji finds out his mum has overtime, the group chat is abuzz with activity. It’s very short notice, but within three and a half hours, you and Akira both manage to make it to Ryuji’s house, with snacks and two six-packs of cider respectively.

Predictably, Ryuji’s room is a complete mess: books are tossed left and right; a towering pile of clothes sits on the chair in front of his desk, threatening to topple over at the slightest instigation; and not one or two, but three packets of insta-cook ramen remain un-binned on his bookshelf, without a single bowl in sight.

(“Did you just eat them straight out of the packet?” you ask, when you walk in, and he almost looks away in shame.

"Don't you think they taste better dry?" is his response, and it's so endearing that you can't help but laugh.)

“Wasn’t Ann supposed to be here by now?” you question, from where you’re curled up on Ryuji’s bed with a dark, green pillow beneath your head. An unopened bag of crisps is on the pillow beside you.

Akira is sat in the corner, reading the first part of a manga Ryuji insisted on recommending. It’s unfamiliar to you, but the cover depicts two men and a black and white, spotted dog. He’s been kind of quiet the whole night, and while you haven’t caught him staring (not yet, anyway) he hasn’t really moved on that far in terms of reading, so you think he’s probably just gotten good at not getting caught.

“Oh, did I not tell you?” Ryuji replies, peeking up from the PSP he’s been staring at for the past ten minutes. He’s sat on the floor, propped up against the side of the bed. “Ann couldn’t come.”

You sit up, and your pins and needles go through your legs in protest.

“Wait, how come?”

From what you can see from behind his shoulder, Ryuji is struggling with a difficult round of Tekken. (His character is getting combo’ed relentlessly.)

“Well, it seemed like she wanted to, at first, but then I told her Akira was coming and it turned out she had other plans.”

Suddenly suspicious, you lift an eyebrow up in Akira’s direction. You’ve only met her once or twice, but you can tell with confidence that Ann exudes an easy-going nature that immediately suggests she wouldn’t care to engage in petty squabbles.

“Did the two of you have an argument or something?” you ask him, and the stiffness that crosses his face is almost comically transparent.

“No comment,” he says, and flips the page.

“Oh, did you hear that?” You’re smiling ear-to-ear. “Lover’s quarrel.”

“Yeah.” Ryuji doesn’t look half as amused as you, but it still comes as a surprise when he dismisses your comment almost entirely and changes the subject. “What bit of that manga are you up to, anyway?” he asks him.

“Some guy with a mullet has just started throwing a weaponised top-hat at Jonathan.”

“Dude! That’s one of the best bits!”

Akira hums. It’s clear he isn’t mirroring Ryuji’s enthusiasm.

“I can’t really get into it,” he admits, turning the book over and scanning the cover again. “It feels a bit… old-fashioned.”

“Well, duh. It came out in 1987.”

“1987?” Akira looks at the back of the book to see the publishing date, which does, in fact declare itself as 1987. “You’re making me read a 30-year-old book?”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with appreciating the classics.”

“He’s right, you know,” you say, even though you’ve got no idea what book he’s even talking about. You shift back into a comfortable position on the bed, and your head hits the ‘Berserk’ manga you were reading before you got distracted. Silently, Akira goes back to his game, and Ryuji back to his manga.

“So, it’s just us three, then,” you say, absentmindedly, and finally open the bag of crisps beside you.

Akira follows cue, popping open another can of cider. “I can leave and give you guys some alone time, if you want,” he says, and it’s got the trademark monotone of the voice he uses for teasing. Eager to jump on the bandwagon, you smile, salacious and large, and speak to Ryuji with a sultry tone.

“Oh, _I_ see. Was that your plan all along, Ryuji?”

The sound of a knockout coming from Ryuji’s PSP and the tinny voice of the announcer counting down in the continue screen gives exactly the satisfaction you were looking for. Sure, you and Akira might not get along as well as you used to, but the two of you have yet to miss a beat when it comes to teasing Ryuji.

“No! That’s not it! Don’t get the wrong idea.”

The urge to get up from the bed and kiss his embarrassed flush is overwhelming, so you listen to it, dragging yourself up and pushing your lips to his cheek. If anything, his embarrassment gets worse, but he leans into it nevertheless.

“I know. I’m just kidding.”

He hums something too quietly for you to hear, and then he rubs his head against the bed, like he wants you to stroke his hair. It looks like he’s burnt out and short-circuited, face still a little pink on the cheeks and eyes closed yearningly. When you gently brush you fingers through his scalp, he hums in appreciation.

It lasts a couple of minutes, and then Ryuji’s phone starts ringing out of the blue, and he jolts out of his seat.

“Oh crap,” he says, checking the ID. “It’s my mum.”

“Better answer it,” Akira suggests. Another page is flippantly turned.

“Yeah, hold on.” Ryuji jogs out of the room, closing the door behind him, and the silence that befalls is immediate. The only thing that breaks it apart is the muted sound of Ryuji’s mother instructing him how to prepare dinner, but eventually, even that fades away, as he walks downstairs to the kitchen.

It’s a little awkward, so you’re grateful when Akira cuts in, sarcasm at the ready.

“You never used to rub _my_ hair like that.” Again, the trademark monotone is enough for you to know not to take his joke seriously. You laugh, and the smile that follows comes without effort.

“You never asked.”

The beginnings of a smile line his face too.

“How about now?” he asks, clearly still kidding. “Please with a cherry on top.”

You laugh again. “Sorry, boyfriend privileges.”

The smile on his face is a little wider now, a little more obvious, and he hums like he was expecting your response. This time, when the silence settles, it does so with tenfold the grace. Akira’s always had charisma, so you’re not surprised to see that the way he manipulates the atmosphere works to his favour. He takes another sip of his cider, and when you look to the side to see where the rest of the cans are, you notice with some vague semblance of shock that a full six-pack has already been completely downed.

Before you can comment on it, he speaks.

“Honestly,” he begins, and his voice is a little more sombre than the dry tone reserved for his witty remarks, “I get a little jealous of you two sometimes.” The atmosphere is barely shed of enough awkward stiffness that it feels natural.

“Don’t be. You said you found your soulmate, didn’t you?” you prompt. He remains silent, so you prod him a little further. “Is it Ann?” You don’t see the way he grits his teeth and flips the page prematurely.

“No, it’s not.”

Thoughtlessly, you finger the fleece blanket you’re curled around.

“Makoto?”

“No.” The sharp quality of his tone throws you off guard, but it’s not enough to discourage you.

“Is it anyone I know?”

He takes a deep breath so loud that you can hear it, and shoves the manga entirely to his side. His hands aren’t _— shaking_, exactly, but they’re certainly less deliberate than what you’re used to with him.

“Yes, it’s someone you know,” he says, and his frustration is clear. When he takes another sip of cider, you realise the only reason he put the book away was to have his hands free for alcohol.

It takes a little while for you to voice your next question, and even when it comes, your voice is tender and tentative. “Will you tell me who it is?”

“No.” (His, on the other hand, is completely definitive.)

You groan, and crawl across where you’re sprawled out on Ryuji’s bed to be closer to him. “Pretty please? With a cherry on top?”

“Why?” he asks, and it’s about as annoyed as it is amused. “Are you jealous?” It sounds like a joke, but all it takes for you to realise it’s not all that is the gentle tug on his amused (albeit not entirely genuine) smile.

“No, of course not!" you defend immediately. “I just… still care about you, you know? even if it’s not in the same way I used to.”

Another sip of the cider. He doesn’t look that drunk, but considering how good he is at underplaying these things, you can’t be sure.

“You’re going to regret it,” he says, matter-of-factly.

You consider that he might be telling the truth, but it's not nearly enough to stave your curiosity.

“Hit me with it anyway.”

A long silence follows. Anticipation builds as you watch him stall by finishing off his drink, and then by doing nothing more significant than staring at the wall ahead of him, like he’s deliberating whether or not to open his mouth. Internally, it feels like he’s teetering on the edge of a cliff, holding on with his arms, his hands, and then the tips of his fingers as his weight tries to pull him under.

Finally, he drops.

“I think you’re my soulmate.”

Your heart stops.

“What?”

When he realises that everything is out in the open, all the things Akira wants to say stop fighting for space. Instead, they line up, pushing and shoving to his mouth until they all tumble out in one long gasp.

“Ryuji told me that it feels like electricity. That he can’t look away from you. That big butterflies swirl in his stomach and everything just feels _right_.” Your breath hitches; heart skips beats again. “It’s what I felt for you back then. Word for word.” He corrects himself. “What I still feel.”

“You still feel?”

“Yes. Every, single thing.”

He can see the discomfort settle in your stiff shoulders, as you move into the wall behind you and away from him.

“But I can’t be with you, Akira. I’m already in love with Ryuji.” Your voice is exasperated, distraught, and it’s clear you’re nervous. It’s screwed up then, that the first thing that pops into his head is how to take advantage of it. How to guilt-trip you into listening to him. Before he can stop himself, he calls out your name and reaches out to touch your hand.

“But didn’t you say that you’d stay with me no-matter what?” he says, as though a promise you gave him six months ago (that he broke, first) held any weight now. “That soulmates didn’t matter.”

You swipe his hand away, as though his touch burns.

“Akira. Don’t do this.”

“Please,” he begs, and if any part of his mind is aware of how pathetic he feels, it’s desperately side-lined in the hopes you’ll take pity on him. “I don’t mind sharing. I don’t even mind being the third wheel.” It doesn’t look like you quite know what to say, so Akira takes the advantage and pretends it’s permission to keep trying to convince you. “Ryuji loves you; he’ll understand.”

“I can’t just, manipulate him like that –”

“I’ll never step out of line or ruin your plans with each other.”

“Akira, cut it out.”

“If you’re scared of hurting him, you don’t even need to tell him; I won’t.”

“ _Akira!_ ”

He stops. The irregular beat of his heart thrums loudly against his ears, and the tense stiffness that comes about as a result of him holding his breath is all the more glaring.

(God, does he feel like a dog begging for scraps.)

“I just can’t do that,” you say, and take a couple of deep breaths to stable your pulse. You’re rubbing at your arm, slightly turned away from him. “It would break his heart, and he deserves better.”

Slowly, Akira’s becoming aware of what he’s doing, but he lets his mind cloud a little longer. This feels like the last chance: the last shot he has at happiness. He can’t just let it go.

“I don’t want what you and Ryuji have,” he explains. “I don’t want to take you from him.”

“I know, but—”

“After I broke up with you, I kept… _trying_ to feel the same thing with other people, but it never happened. And now that you’re back , I can’t—I can’t do it. I can’t pretend anymore.”

Fortitude attempts to reign your expression. The frown on your face feels detached, unnaturally so, and he thinks you might just be trying to reel in your sympathy by steeling yourself.

“You should have never left me,” you say, quietly, numbly, and completely barren of emotion.

“I…” he starts, and he knows you’re right, that he’s the one that put himself in this position in the first place. (That it’s his fault.) He just - didn’t know, back then. He didn’t know it was going to hurt so much. “I did it for _you_.”

Whatever transparent detachment holds his tears back snaps in that moment.

“Oh, Akira.” Your steeled bearing melts in favour of climbing off the bed down to where he’s sat and tugging him in towards you, and when you do it, he sinks into it, grips you like a lifeline and buries his tears into the crook of your neck.

“I just wanted you to be happy.”

“I know.” The way you say it is utterly definitive and it breaks him, it really does; draws a line through the middle of his chest and pierces his heart, because in that moment, he realises it’s just not enough.

“I’m sorry,” you add. Your voice is choked up.

“It’s fine,” he replies, even though he’s completely shattered, torn into little pieces like a book with all the pages ripped out, sent flying in different directions with the whims of the wind.

He doesn't want this platonic pity; he doesn’t want you to cry. It rams into him a million miles an hour then, that he should have just kept his mouth shut, because now you’re hurt, and now he can’t even wait with Ryuji for you in front of the school and catch little glimpses of you, like a drowning man grappling for gasps of air.

The two of you don’t say anything else for a long, long time, so he takes the chance to brush up against your collar. He inhales every rush of your scent and lets it ease him, bit by bit with each breath.

(He’d stay like this forever, if he could.)

“What if –" he begins, but it gets caught in his throat, and he has to pause before trying again. “What if it was just up to you?” Before you can push him away (and his fingers curl into firsts around your clothes, keeping you in place) he hurries to explain himself. “It’s too late. I know. But I just need to be sure.”

He’s has no idea what exactly he’s looking for. He knows you don’t love him the same way that you love Ryuji (never did). You’re not his soulmate. Not right now. You must have loved him in some way, some distant apparition of it, at least. But nothing can come between the overwhelming bond that ties two soulmates together. He knows, because he’s tried, (with Ann, Makoto, Kawakami, Hifumi, Tae, Ohya, Chihaya and handfuls of others he can’t remember the names of) and none of them have ever come close.

“If it was just up to me?” You mull the answer over, because it’s difficult to be certain what the right thing to say here is. Should you throw him a bone? Should you be honest? (Would he believe you if you weren’t?) None of them feel quite right, because you don’t want to pretend like you feel _nothing_ for him, but it wouldn’t be fair to say something that could give a false sense of hope. “Akira, I don’t think —"                         

“It _is_ up to you,” comes a third voice.

It’s whiplash. Immediately, your stomach does somersaults. 

Ryuji’s leaning against the open door to his room, arms crossed in front of his chest. For a second, you’re scared he’s heard the tail-end of your little spat and assumed the worst, but to tell the truth, he doesn’t look that angry. He doesn’t even look that surprised, not really. Compared to him, Akira looks like a deer caught in headlights. He’s too scared to move, too weak to pull away from you.

The silence is absolutely suffocating; it envelops most everyone in a thick, tight tension, tightening around your lungs until breathing becomes almost impossible.

“Ryuji, I promise this isn’t… He’s just—he’s just upset,” you scramble to answer. Your heart pumps blood erratically, throbbing like drums through every part of your body.

“I know, babe,” he says, calmly, and then sighs, long and deep. “I know.” The bed dimples where he sits on it, and Akira hurriedly unsticks himself from you to wipe at his eyes. In turn, Ryuji wipes at yours, and then places his head in his hands and stares down at the floor.

There’s only the sound of sniffling for what feels like a long while, and then Ryuji speaks again. “Akira, we’ve been friends for a while.” His voice is heavy. “I know we’ve had our ups and downs, and I know you’ve been cleaning up after my shit plenty.” He maintains a sort of distant nature to his voice. It’s not anywhere near monotone, but there’s an odd sense of finality about it. “But honestly, I can’t believe you’re pulling this crap on me.”

Akira is hiding his face in his hands. He’s half avoiding looking at Ryuji, but it’s almost unwarranted with how unaccusatory Ryuji’s gaze is. It’s not hard to imagine that Akira’s feelings don’t come as a surprise to him.

“It’s the drink,” Akira mumbles, but you’re not buying it, Akira’s not buying it, and Ryuji sure as hell isn’t buying it either.

“Sure. So what happened with Ann was just the drink, too?” he asks.

Akira stops, entirely, like he’s been frozen, and then he laughs woefully and shakes his head. “She told you,” he says, and although he’s not sobbing, his voice breaks into splinters of uneven pitch and size.

“You hurt her, Akira. She liked you more than she let on.”

Another laugh, this one wracked with guilt. Ryuji watches him for a little while longer, but he’s so broken and pitiful everywhere he looks that he stops expecting a response, and eventually, Ryuji turns to you again.

“Babe,” he calls out, and the favour in his voice comes as a sharp surprise. It’s not the case that he was angry when reprimanding Akira, (just kind of tired and exhausted) but this tone, tailored especially for you, is immeasurably sweeter all the same. “He didn’t threaten you, did he?”

The enthusiasm with which you rush to defend him surprises everyone in the room, most of all Akira.

“No! Of course not.”

You try to justify it by saying it’d be unfair to pretend he’s the bad guy. That while he might not be a great friend to Ryuji, you don’t doubt he loves you, and he’d never break his principles to hurt you. And while all of those things are true, it’s less about them, and more about how hard it is to forget the delicacy of his fingers against your skin, the way it dimples where his lips brush against you, even if he’s kissing to leave marks. The way he pushes into you with only a fraction of his body weight, softly in and out even if you’re asking him for more.

He’d called it ‘teasing’, then, but it’s more a case of fragility. Of being so scared of hurting you or losing you that he treats you like glass. Even if he wants to listen to your cries and envelop you completely (let himself be consumed by heat and push the burning of his body onto you), he can’t.

There’s a barrier, and it’s thick and heavy even now.

“Are you sure?” he asks, shifts a little closer (until he’s close enough to wipe your tears again), and scans you for any hint of dishonesty.

You nod, firmly.

One, two, three beats of absolute silence. The bad kind. The one that cuts your heart of oxygen and your brain of any thought bar fear and premonition. Ryuji’s still looking at you, analysing everything about your voice for fear, but to his frustration, all he sees is fondness.

After a while, he kicks at the floor in vexed concession.

“Shit, man,” he says, and brings his hand up to ruffle his hair. He looks conflicted, but less like he doesn’t know what decision to make, and more like he doesn’t like a decision he’s made already. He stares at Akira, long and hard, and then seethes under his breath. “I wish I didn’t owe this whole thing you."

It confuses you for a second, but when you see his frustrated gesticulation in your direction, you realise what he's referring to. After all, it is thanks to Akira that you and Ryuji met in the first place. If he hadn’t given himself up for your happiness: informed Ryuji of pain-bound soulmates, or pushed two two of you into meeting on that train station, the two of you could still be apart.

A deep breath comes and goes, and then Ryuji says something neither of you would have ever expected him to say.

“Just for tonight,” he begins, and has to take another deep breath before he continues, “she’s yours.”

Your heart drops.

With a jolt from your seat, you make a move to protest, but Ryuji cuts you off.

“But you’re only allowed to go as far as she lets you, do ya hear? If I come back and find her cryin’ or I see a single scratch on her, I’m going to kill you.” There’s no joke to it; he means what he’s saying. “And I’m gonna feel no fuckin’ remorse, regardless of how long we’ve been friends for.”

Akira nods, sharply. He’s stood up, too, heart beating too fast to sit still. He turns to you, and quickly finds he can’t turn away, even if you never give him so much as a glance.

“Ryuji, you can’t just --”

When he interrupts you with a kiss (a sharp tug to your chin and upwards, where he cups the back of your head with his hand), you’re concerned he’s going to ask you to give Akira what he wants.

But it’s not what he says. Not at all.

“I trust you,” he whispers, loud enough for Akira to hear. “I trust you’re gonna say no to everything he asks for, even if he begs on his knees.” Gently, he leans in for another kiss, and you realise with a heavy lurch to your throat the gravity of the situation you’ve found yourself in.

“Ryuji,” you try again, because you want to discuss this further, ask him what he’s doing and why he thinks it’s a good idea, but he cuts you off with another kiss.

“He’s not going to give up otherwise,” Ryuji offers lamely, and it’s better than nothing by a slim margin. “Or maybe he—” Ryuji swallows. “You know,” and there’s a lengthy period of hesitation. “Maybe he needs to get it out of his system. Maybe _you_ need to get it out of his system.”

“How?” you ask, but Ryuji doesn’t answer, just pulls you in for another kiss. It’s a feeble attempt to distract at best, but it does its job, and you don’t pursue his statement.

“Just know I won’t give you up even if you start liking him again, alright?” he says, and by no means is it a question.

“I would never,” you exclaim, with such fervour that your hands tighten their grip on his arms. “Seriously, don’t even think about it.”

Another dapple of kisses, marking freckles where fresh eruptions of tingles tickle against your skin.

For a moment, Akira disappears.

Amongst Ryuji’s little touches and caresses, he feels like he’s sunk into the background (once again a jigsaw in the wrong box) a piece that doesn’t fit in with the rest. And well, isn’t it all par for the course anyway - that being blank leaves him with no other option but to be the third wheel?

It’s what he’s always thought; that even if you matched him perfectly: filled out every un-ironed crease in his life like a god-sent benefaction, ticked every box, made every bad thing good and every good thing even better, you were never meant to be.

Because why otherwise would the two of you be nameless?

But then –

 _But then_ he remembers what your blank skin looked like in the hazy moonlight when he had you on his parent’s balcony; he remembers the nonchalance when Ryuji told him he was blank, the twist in his gut that made him feel empty out of sheer, concentrated jealousy. (How could he even pretend it was anything else?) And now, he sees the dauntlessness of Ryuji’s arms, their assured and certain confidence as they crawl around your body, claiming your skin even if his name is nowhere to be found.

He realises, with more dread than anything else, that he was the variable all along.

(Because maybe if he’d stayed, loved you without the need for confirmation, if he wasn’t so obsessed with the idea of something as arbitrary as having his name on someone else’s skin, you could be feeling _his_ pain instead.)

 _Hah_ , he thinks, and his heart gives out so fast he barely has the time to laugh again.

 _It was never about destiny, was it_?

Against every single blow that’s hit him up to this point – this one is painfully neutral. Maybe it’s the finality of it, the way it makes him know without a doubt that this is the only way things can be. Compared to everything else (the jealousy, the bitterness, the guilt – and that one is by far the worst) it’s almost a positive feeling, one he’s glad to welcome into himself. Surely, this neutral rush of ‘eureka’ is better than every awful sludge of emotion that’s been sitting in his chest since he left you.

It’s why he smiles when you say, (sweet little voice freshly unearthed from the crook of Ryuji’s shoulder) “Akira? Is everything alright?”

He doesn’t give a verbal response for a little while, just looks on from across his tented hands with that same bitter-sweet smile, a tapestry of dimpled cheeks that never gets close to reaching his eyes.

“Yeah,” he says, eventually, and he wants to say more, (“I love you; everyone else feels like an in-between; If Ryuji wasn’t here I’d—”) but they all circle too closely around ‘I wish I could have you’ and there’s no part of him that thinks you don’t know that already.

Reluctantly, you unpeel yourself from Ryuji, pushing against his arms until he lets go with even more reservation. For a second, his hand hovers over you like it wants to pull you in again, but he draws it back, and it has no choice but to relent. When he stands up, the place where his weight used to be feels blank and empty. He walks to door, slumping tiredly against it, and you don’t need to be linked through pain to feel the absolute agony in his eyes.

He looks at Akira first, half-expecting him to change his mind and say it’s fine (that he doesn't need this), but he’s not surprised when nothing of the sort happens.

“Ryuji—” Akira begins, but quickly stops, because doesn't know what he’s going to say. ‘Thank you’ feels too big; Ryuji’s not exactly giving him permission, he’s just severing him of consequences out of nothing more than a feeling of obligation. But then what else works? What else can he say to show his appreciation?

“You’re a piece of shit friend, you know that, right?” Ryuji cuts him off.

With a start, Akira realises what he has to say.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

A half-hearted huff and careless wave is all it takes for Ryuji to swipe Akira's apology away.

“Whatever,” he says, and gives you one last (pained, very pained) look before leaving, down the stairs and through his front door till you hear it smash shut.

It doesn’t lock behind him.

 

* * *

 

The silence that follows is the worst yet.

It’s so powerful that Akira knows he has nowhere near the skill to break it apart: that no jokes, no sarcasm, no smiles, or any words in general can get him out of this quicksand.

In general, this feels like the worst-case scenario. Not only do you know about his feelings (about the pull they have on him, puppeteering him like a dandelion seed pushed in random directions through the air), but so does Ryuji. He can’t pretend anymore. It’s entirely possible that he’ll never be able to laugh with you again, not really, not without getting pitiful looks at his attempts to cling to you like a child clinging helplessly to their parent, or a dog circling its owner’s foot.

Oddly, he’s not as upset as he should be. He finds that his next words come with practised confidence, and the gestures of his hands stop feeling so stiff.

“I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to,” he says.  It’s a complete reiteration of his vow towards Ryuji, but it puts you at ease enough that you turn to him. “But I’m not leaving. I can’t make it that easy.”

When he looks into your eyes and sees no real love (not the kind he wants, anyway), he knows with certainty that he’s lost. There’s no doubt, no space to assume parts unfilled (like a liquid) where you and Ryuji meld. To make room for himself, he’d have to split you, and he’s got neither the heart nor ability to do that.

He’s lost, that’s for sure. It was over before the story even begun, long prior to the breakage of Ryuji’s femur. But as he looks closer and watches you scan over him, a look that drips pity with such putrid stench he can feel it on his skin even from here, he lets himself think, that sometimes, even losers get consolation prizes.

 

* * *

 

When Ryuji comes home at half-past four in the morning, it’s still dark outside. The lights are on in his room where you’re sleeping on his bed, and when he opens the door quietly (as not to alert), he can’t hear the sound of conversation.

Akira is nowhere to be found.

There’s a sense of dread inside of him, not quite premonition, but a soft fear all the same. He’s not sure how his heart would take seeing any evidence that you’ve actually slept with Akira, so his eyes hesitate when they skim over you. Because maybe, your clothes are a little ruffled. Maybe your hair is just a titch unruly (surely, it’s just because you’ve been lying on it).

He feels greedy waking you from your nap just to kiss you, but he does it anyway.

“Hm, Ryuji,” you say, through the kiss, and he closes his eyes and kisses you harder. “I didn’t do anything,” you mumble, tiredly.

“I know,” he says, so softly it’s on the verge of breaking.  He crawls over you on the couch and buries his face into your neck, trailing soft, barely there at all kisses on every inch of your uncovered body, like he’s trying to wash something away.

He moves to take your top off and thinks about closing his eyes so he doesn’t see any marks that may or may not be underneath. Instead, he pushes himself off you and turns the lights off, so your form is coloured a vague black in the darkness.

“Ryuji?” you ask, as he places his hands on your waist and feels your body beneath him, painting an image of your clean, unmarred skin, free of any names or marks.

“Shh,” he whispers, just above your ear, in case he pays too much attention to your voice and notices any strange cracks or undulations, things that could point towards its overuse.

With a slurred movement, he drags your top off and kisses your chest, sucking on the skin enough to leave (what he hopes) are bright, red marks.

 “I know,” he repeats, and he leaves so, so many, over and over on every single part of your skin: from your arms, to your legs, and your stomach, until not an inch is unmarked. When his eyes adjust to the dark, he’s left too many to count. Too many to remember. Too many to know for sure if they’re all his.

“I trust you,” he says, but his eyes close nevertheless.

**Author's Note:**

> To get updates on my writing, please follow [@ao3-actually-android](https://ao3-actually-android.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.


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